"Saved the game," Alex Avila said of the defense. "That's the bottom line. We did all three aspects of baseball as well as we could today. We got some real good pitching, real good defense and timely hits."

Doug Fister walked a hitter and hit a batter to start the first. Then, the Tigers turned a 1-6-3 double play. Fister walked two batters to start the second. Then, the Tigers turned a 4-6-3 double play. Fister settled down at that point, as the Red Sox had harmless two-out singles in the fourth and fifth.

After Shane Victorino led off the sixth with a single, the Red Sox had a hit-and-run on with Dustin Pedroia at the plate. Pedroia hit the ball up the middle, just a bit toward the first-base side of the bag at second. As Victorino and Iglesias converged, Iglesias managed to field the ball, then made an agile move to put the tag on Victorino and spun around before throwing out Pedroia at first.

"You can't practice those," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. "That's just athleticism and flexibility and
agility, whatever you want to call it. You just can't practice a play
like that. Somebody tells me they practice a play like that, I'll tell
them they're lying."

Iglesias made a nice play, but it also set up nicely for him. If the Red Sox had not had the hit-and-run on, the ball simply would have gone up the middle for a single. The only reason the two converged was because Victorino was running on the pitch, which forced Iglesias to try to cover the bag.

If Victorino would have been slower to second, he could have frozen on the basepaths or backtracked to force Iglesias to chase him down, which would have prevented the double play. But the ball was hit where it was when it was, and Iglesias made a nice play.

"He's amazing over there," Avila said. "Taking (batting practice) over there, talking to a lot of the Red Sox people, they were kind of bummed to see him go. They obviously had to make their move to try to do what they to do, but he's special out there defensively for sure."

The Red Sox had a runner on base with fewer than two outs three times in the first six innings. The Tigers turned double plays in each of those three innings. That helped Doug Fister keep the Red Sox off the board while the Tigers tried to solve Boston starter John Lackey.

They finally did in the seventh inning, when a triple by Andy Dirks scored Victor Martinez from first base to make it 1-0. The Tigers added another run in the seventh and one in the eighth on their way to the win.

Fister (12-7) picked up the victory. Jose Veras earned the save. But Iglesias and the infield defense deserved an assist, for sure.

"He's made about three already that I've never seen before," Leyland said. "He's going to make some of those acrobatic plays."